Walden Two

B. F. Skinner was a professor of psychology, recipient of multiple awards and honours for his work, and went down in history as one of the greatest proponents of the behaviourist psychology in which he proposed the so-called "radical behaviourism," a proposal that sees individuals as systems of behaviour — human responses to stimuli from the environment — in which everything we feel is just a reflection of the way we behave. In this way Skinner believed that by shaping the environment we could shape individuals, he believed in the possibility of "behaviour engineering" through "cultural engineering". The book "Walden II" (1948) is a novel that follows the Socratic method (philosophical inquiry through dialogue) and serves the presentation of these engineerings based on a utopian community. It is not a great novel, but it is an excellent presentation of the author's ideas, which makes it an excellent read for anyone interested in the subject. About its scientific foundation, Chomsky answered Skinner this way, in 1971: "At the moment we have virtually no scientific evidence and not even the germs of an interesting hypothesis about how human behavior is determined". ... ...A análise complete em Português encontra-se publicada no blog VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...